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Central Atlas Tamazight phonology
Consonants Central Atlas Tamazight has a contrastive set of "flat" consonants, manifested in two ways: * For front segments, pharyngealization: ) * For back segments, labialization: ) Note that pharyngealization may spread to a syllable or even a whole word. Historically Proto-Berber only had two pharyngealized phonemes ( ), but modern Berber languages have borrowed others from Arabic and developed new ones through sound shifts. In addition Tamazight has uvular and pharyngeal consonants, as well as a conspicuous lack of in its plosive inventory. is missing from about 10% of languages that have a . (See voiced velar plosive for another such gap.) This is an areal feature of the "circum-Saharan zone" (Africa north of the equator plus the Arabian peninsula). It is not known how old this areal feature is, and whether it might be a recent phenomenon due to Arabic as a prestige language (Arabic lost its in prehistoric times), or whether Arabic was itself affected by a more ancient areal pattern. It is found in other areas as well; for example, in Europe, Proto-Celtic is reconstructed as having but no . Nonetheless, the sound is very common cross-linguistically. All segments may be geminated except for the pharyngeals . In Ayt Ndhir, which is a dialect of Tamazight with spirantization, the spirantizeable consonants appear in their stop forms when geminated, and additionally the geminate correspondents of are usually respectively. However some native Berber words have (not ) where other dialects have singleton , and similarly for . In addition, in Arabic loans singleton non-spirantized occur (though and to an extent often alternate with their spirantized versions in loans), giving this alternation marginal phonemic status. In the table below, when consonants appear in pairs, the one on the left is voiceless. Phonetic notes: : /k g/ are fricatives x}} in the Ayt Ayache dialect : rare—native speakers can freely substitute : mainly in Arabic borrowings : For a small number of speakers, is sometimes lenited to . : is aspirated . Vowels Tamazight has a typical phonemic three-vowel system, similarly to Classical Arabic: These phonemes have numerous allophones, conditioned by the following environments: (# denotes word boundary, X denotes C− − , C̣ denotes C+flat, G denotes C, , and ) Phonetic Schwa There is a predictable non-phonemic vowel inserted into consonant clusters, realized as before front consonants (e.g. ) and before back consonants (e.g. . It is voiced before voiced consonants and voiceless before voiceless consonants, or alternatively it can be realized as a voiced or unvoiced consonant release. It also may be realized as the syllabicity of a nasal, lateral, or /r/. The occurrence of schwa epenthesis is governed morphophonemically. These are some of the rules governing the occurrence of : (# denotes word boundary, L denotes , H denotes ) Examples: * > ('you (fp) turned') * > ('she is present') * > ('to meet') However note that word-initial initial are realized as before consonants. In word-medial or -final position , , and are realized as , , and respectively, and may become and in rapid speech. Tamazight in fact has numerous words without phonemic vowels, and those consisting entirely of voiceless consonants will not phonetically contain voiced vowels.Audio recordings of selected words without vowels in Shilha can be downloaded from http://ed268.univ-paris3.fr/lpp/pages/EQUIPE/ridouane/audio.doc. is written as in neo-Tifinagh and as in the Berber Latin alphabet. French publications tended to include in their transcriptions of Berber forms despite their predictability, perhaps due to the French vowel system. This can cause problems because alternations such as 'he slaughtered' – 'he did not slaughter' would then have to conditioned morphologically. Stress Word stress is non-contrastive and predictable — it falls on the last vowel in a word (including schwa). Examples: * > ('to ask') * > ('he is present') * > ('to explain') * > ('you (fp) explained') References